Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Micaela Leonarda Antonia Almonester, Baroness de Pontalba painted in 1927 from a early 19th century portrait miniature

This is first of a post on the 1850 house museum located in the Pontalba buildings on Jackson square in the heart of New Orleans French Quarter. The 1850 house museum is deer to my heart. As a child I remember reading about it and seeing photo's of the beautiful Antebellum interiors in books. In my teen's my family went to New Orleans every few months and for the first time I got a chance to see this magical place in person. Every time I was in New Orleans as a teenager I would stop by the 1850 house museum for a visit not knowing that in my mid 20's I would work in the gift shop under the 1850 house museum. We can't get into the 1850 house museum without first talking about the fascinating woman that was behind building the Pontalba buildings

Micaela Leonarda Antonia Almonester, Baroness de Pontalba (November 6,
1795- April 20, 1874) was a wealthy New Orleans-born aristocrat, businesswoman
and real estate developer, and one of the most dynamic personalities of that
city's history.

The St. Louis Cathedral, the Presbytere and the Cabildo uilt and paied for by Micaela's father

Her father died on April 26, 1798, when Micaela was two and a half years
old. Prior to his death, he had commissioned architect Gilberto Guillemard to
design and construct the St. Louis Cathedral, the Presbytere and the Cabildo,
all of which line one side of Place d'Armes. The original church and Cabildo had
been destroyed in the Great New Orleans fire of 1788. Upon the death of her
Spanish father, Andres Almonester y Rojas in 1798, Micaela, as his only
surviving child, inherited a considerable fortune; although the estate was
controlled by her mother a Creole, Louise Denis de la Ronde a member of one of
the most illustrious Creole families in Louisiana. Micaela's mother Louise
shortly afterwards the death of her first husband married Jean Baptiste
Castillon, the 25-year-old French consul. The huge difference in their ages
caused much scorn amongst the people of New Orleans, who showed their
displeasure by conducting a riotous charivari that lasted for three days and
nights which even featured effigies of her new bridegroom and dead husband in
his coffin. The charivari was only called off once Louise had promised to donate
the sum of $3,000 to the poor.

The Old Ursuline Convent where Micaela was educated is the oldest building in the Mississippi River Valley.
Completed in 1752, it is also the oldest surviving example of the French
colonial period in the United States.

Being the sole heiress to a considerable fortune, Micaela was likely the
richest girl in the city. Her younger sister Andrea Antonia had died in 1802 at
the age of four. Micaela was educated, along with other daughters of the Creole
elite, by the nuns at the old Ursuline Convent situated on la Rue Conde, now
Chartres Street. She was an artistic child as well as musical; at the age of
13 she owned her own piano. At home she spoke French, although she knew Spanish,
and later she learned English.

The St. Louis Cathedral where Micaela was married and built by her father.
It is the oldest continuously active Roman Catholic Cathedral in the United
States, originally built in 1727 and dedicated to King Louis IX of France, “The
Crusading King” who was later canonized by the Church. The original St. Louis
Cathedral burned during the great fire of 1794 and was rebuilt. The present
structure was completed in the 1850s.

In keeping with Creole tradition, a marriage was arranged for Micaela in
1811 when she was fifteen. Although Micaela was in love with an impoverished
man, she had no choice but to accept the husband her mother had picked for her.
He was her 20-year-old cousin, Xavier Célestin Delfau de Pontalba, known as
Celestin or "Tin Tin", who although born in New Orleans, lived with his family
in France. The de Pontalbas had made the proposition to Micaela's mother by
letter, having regarded a matrimonial tie between the two families as a
"business merger that would transfer the Almonester wealth into their hands".
The prospective groom duly arrived in Louisiana with his mother, Jeanne
Françoise le Breton des Chapelles Delfau de Pontalba, and after an acquaintance
of just three weeks he and Micaela were married. The marriage was celebrated on
23 October 1811 at St. Louis Cathedral and attended by the most influential
members of Creole society. Indicative of her high social rank amongst the Creole
community, Micaela was given away at the wedding ceremony by nobleman and
distant cousin Bernard de Marigny, acting as a representative of Marshall Ney,
the trusted military commader of Emperor Napoleon I. Father Antonio De Sedella
officiated at the ceremony which was conducted in Spanish - a language Micaela's
groom did not understand. In contrast to her mother's second marriage, the
citizens of New Orleans strongly approved of this match which was considered to
have been the most important marriage ever contracted in New Orleans by two
illustrious Creole families. Immediately upon her marriage, Micaela became a
French citizen.

Château de Mont-L'Eveque - Oise (France).

Sometime after the wedding, Micaela and Célestin, accompanied by both their
mothers, left Louisiana for France. They arrived in July 1812 and the couple
took up residence with Célestin's family at Mont-l'Évêque, the moated, medieval
de Pontalba chateau outside Senlis which was about 50 miles from Paris. Her
mother, Louise Castillon, went to live in a rented house in Paris before she set
about astutely buying up property in the city including a home on the Place
Vendôme. She had become a widow for the second time in 1809 with the death of
Jean Baptiste Castillon.

At first the marriage was successful; Micaela became pregnant shortly after
their arrival in France and eventually bore her husband a total of four sons and
a daughter. To alleviate the boredom of country life, she converted a large room
at the old chateau into a theatre where she put on plays. She put a lot of
energy and enthusiasm into her project, ordering costumes for the performers and
hiring local people for the minor roles and Parisian artists for the leading
roles. She often performed onstage in the amateur theatrical productions which
were attended by her friends from Paris. However, the constant interference of
her eccentric father-in-law eventually turned the marriage into a disaster which
was made worse by the fact that Célestin possessed a weak, spoiled, effeminate
character. Her father-in-law, Baron Joseph Delfau de Pontalba, who had served as
an officer in the French and Spanish armies, was greedy and unstable, and over
the years proceeded to make Micaela's life extremely unhappy and intolerable.
The baron was already greatly disappointed with Micaela's dowry, considering it
much smaller than he had been led to expect. The $40,000 plus some jewelry
Micaela brought to Célestin as her dowry which had been the sum agreed upon when
the marriage contract was drawn up, represented only one-quarter of her
Almonester inheritance with the remaining three-quarters retained by Louise. The
old baron, intent upon seizing the vast Almonester fortune, had forced Micaela
into signing a general Power of Attorney giving her husband control over her
assets, rents, and capital, both dotal, and as heir of her father. In the early
1820s, to escape the tyranny of her father-in-law, Micaela persuaded Célestin to
set up his own household in Paris, and the couple and their children moved into
one of his father's homes in the Rue du Houssaie close to her mother's
residence.

President Andrew Jackson

The death of her mother in 1825 left Micaela as the sole recipient of her
considerable estate which also included numerous properties in Paris. The de
Pontalbas furiously demanded that she sign over all her New Orleans property to
them in exchange for her being allowed to assume control of her mother's Paris
houses. In 1830, without her husband's permission, she went to New Orleans for
an extended visit, taking the opportunity to travel around other parts of the
United States. She stopped in Washington DC where President Andrew Jackson sent
his own carriage and secretary of state Martin Van Buren to bring her to the
White House as his guest. The celebrated Battle of New Orleans in which Jackson
had defeated the invading British on 8 January 1815 had been fought on the
grounds of the Chalmette Plantation belonging to her uncle and aunt. Upon
her return to France the baron accused her of deserting Célestin; as a result
she became a "virtual prisoner" of the de Pontalbas. In frustration, she took
her children and transferred back to Paris where she began a series of lawsuits
to obtain a separation from Célestin, but lost them due to the strict French
marriage laws.

Château de Mont-L'Eveque - Oise (France).

Micaela's attempts to protect her fortune and separate from Célestin so
enraged Baron de Pontalba that he resorted to violence. On October 19, 1834,
during one of her visits to the chateau, he stormed into her bedroom and shot
Micaela four times in the chest at point-blank range with a pair of duelling
pistols. After the first shot, she allegedly screamed out: "Don't! I'll give you
everything". Whereupon he replied: "No, you are going to die" and shot her
another three times in the chest, one bullet passing through the hand that she
had instinctly put up to cover one of the gun's muzzles. Despite her injuries,
Micaela made an attempt to escape her father-in-law and outside the door she
fell into the arms of her maid who had rushed up the stairs upon hearing the
first gunshot. With the armed baron still in pursuit, Micaela was dragged down
the stairs to the drawing room where she fell to the floor, crying out, "Help
me". Baron de Pontalba stood over her bleeding, unconscious body, yet he fired
no more shots and returned to his study.
She survived the shooting attack,
despite having been shot four times in the chest, with one of the bullets having
crushed her hand. Her left breast was disfigured and two of her fingers
mutilated. That same evening the baron, having never left his study, committed
suicide by shooting himself in the head with the same pistols.

A 1835 portrait of the Baroness painted just after she survived an attack on her life by her father-in-law.

With one billet still in her chest and two missing fingers. You can see the Baroness hiding them in the folds of a dress ribbon

In 1848 at the outbreak of revolution in France, Micaela, accompanied by
two of her sons Alfred and Gaston, departed for New Orleans to visit relatives
and check on her property, where she quickly became the leader of fashionable
society, her salons drawing the city's most important and influential people.
The wealthiest white woman in New Orleans at the time, her contemporaries
regarded Micaela as having been shrewd, vivacious, and business-like. Seeing New
Orleans for the first time after an absence of many years, Micaela had
immediately noticed that the once-stylish French Quarter had become derelict and
unsightly. The Place d'Armes, in the heart of the French Quarter, was little
better than a slum; its parade ground muddy, and houses squalid and neglected.
She owned most of the property in Place d'Armes as it formed part of her vast
inheritance. Her assets there valued at $520,000, but despite being owner of the
third most valuable property in the French Quarter, she made little profit from
it as most of her tenants were slack in paying the rent. Micaela put her
imagination to work and made energetic plans to remedy the situation. She
ordered the houses to be demolished and hired the skilled building contractor
Samuel Stewart to renovate the Place d'Armes. The following year after obtaining
an agreement from the city for a 20-year tax exemption, she personally designed
and commissioned the construction of the beautiful red-brick town houses forming
two sides of Place d'Armes which are today known as the Pontalba Buildings.
Their exteriors resembled the edifices in Paris' Place des Vosges.

The construction of the Pontalba Buildings cost more than $300,000, and
she was a constant visitor to the construction sites, often supervising the work
on horseback. The cast-ironwork decorating the balconies were also her personal
design and she had her initials "AP" carved into the center of each section of
the iron work designed by her son. Micaela knew so much about the design and
construction of buildings that historian Christina Vella described her as a "lay
genius in architecture".

The baroness designed her own seal shown here on the railings of one of the
Pontalba buildings

At the time the buildings were row houses. Micaela
and her sons occupied the house at number 5, St. Peter Street. When Swedish
singer Jenny Lind visited New Orleans for a month in 1851, Micaela graciously
allowed her the use of her own house along with a chef. Prior to her departure,
Lind publicly expressed her gratitude to Micaela for the latter's lavish
hospitality. Afterward, Micaela auctioned the furniture Lind had used and made a
very nice profit . Micaela was also instrumental in the name change of Place
d'Armes to Jackson Square; as well as the decision to convert it from a parade
ground to a formal garden. She also helped finance the bronze equestrian statue
of Andrew Jackson which features prominently in the square. It was alleged that
when she was landscaping the garden, she threatened the mayor with a shotgun
after he tried to prevent her from tearing down two rows of trees. Shortly after
Jenny Lind's visit, she and her sons left New Orleans for good and went back to
Paris where her eldest surviving son, Célestin and his family resided. She spent
the remainder of her life at her mansion on the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré.
When her estranged husband suffered a physical and mental breakdown she took him
in and cared for him up until her own death.

Xavier Célestin Delfau de Pontalba, known as Celestin or "Tin Tin" painted after the shooting of his wife

As Célestin had succeeded to his father's barony upon the latter's suicide,
Micaela was henceforth styled Baroness de Pontalba. Eventually, after several
more lawsuits, a civil law judge ordered the restitution of her property and
Micaela was granted a legal separation from her husband; although they were not
actually divorced. With some of the money her mother had willed her, she
commissioned noted architect Louis Visconti to construct a mansion on the Rue du
Faubourg Saint-Honoré in Paris which she subsequently used to entertain
lavishly, hosting an endless succession of balls, soirees, and parties. This
mansion is known today as the Hôtel de Pontalba and serves as official residence
of the United States Ambassador to France.

The Hôtel de Pontalba, Micaela's Paris mansion built by her and where she died
in 1874 is now the residence of the United States Ambassador to France

Micaela Almonester de Pontalba died at the Hôtel de Pontalba in Paris on
April 20, 1874 at the age of seventy-eight. By this time she was already a
legend in the city of her birth, as one of New Orleans' most dynamic
personalities.

Micaela was described as a flamboyant,
temperamental redhead. Physically she resembled her father. Her portraits reveal
that she had brown hair, blue-grey eyes, and pale skin; Christina Vella
described her complexion as having had the "hue of stored muslin". Although she
was not classically beautiful - having had a rather long and "horsey" face - she
was intelligent, strong-willed and attracted much admiration from the Parisians
for her opulent entertainments.

Micaela left three surviving sons: Célestin (1815-1885), Alfred
(1818-1877), and Gaston (1821-1875). Her firstborn son Joseph and only daughter
Mathilde had died as babies. Célestin and Alfred both married and had children
whose descendants in the present day continue to reside in France. Gaston,
however died unmarried. Her husband, Célestin died on 18 August 1878. He was
buried beside her in the de Pontalba family tomb at Mont l'Évêque.

As a 19th century woman Micaela accomplishments were great. She was responsible
for the design and construction of the famous Pontalba Buildings in Jackson
Square, in the heart of the French Quarter. She is the subject of an
opera,Pontalba: a Louisiana Legacy, which was composed by Thea Musgrave. A play
entitled The Baroness, Undressed, and many novels have been written about her
dramatic life.

Wednesday, October 10, 2012

While in New Orleans for 11 days I picked up this nice 1830's French milk
glass dish handpainted with garden sprigs and the early 19th c French Empire Cordial glass.

It has been a long time since I posted one of my "Today's Purchases" post.
I think the last one was posted way back in Spring. This Summer has been very
busy for me. I did a lot of traveling to my favorite city, New Orleans. In all
the traveling and hustle and bustle I still found time to attend my favorite
monthly estate sale. Twice this Summer leaveing to New Orleans a few hours after
attending the sale. I got some amazing pieces from this sale. Local shops
in Mobile, Alabama and in New Orleans. In "Today's Purchases" I highlight some
of the amazing finds of the past Summer.

The French early 19th century cut crystal Cordial glass is in good
condition and has a wonderful flared shape. It's hard to find a set of glasses from
this period. That's why when I see one I buy it.

The Romantic period French milk glass dish has handpainted sprigs of garden
flowers with a cut and gilt Moorish style rim.

Although a little late in period for me I could not pass up these 3 late 19th century American brilliant cut glass cordials that were on the dollar table at the
estate sale.

Or this cut glass wine goblet for one buck.

1850's Bohemian overlay Art Glass enamel landscape chalice

The beaker has beautifully detailed hand painted rectangular medallion with
canted corners of a mountainous view with a couple walking in it, German gold
gilt title.

The chalice is cut white overlay over clear glass and has beautiful cut
decoration and gold gilt tracery all over the piece.

The chalice is cut white overlay over clear glass and has beautiful cut
decoration and gold gilt tracery all over the piece.

Star cut bottom

This is a exceptionally rare mid nineteen century Bohemian overlay cut glass
chalice beaker with a beautifully detailed hand painted rectangular medallion
with canted corners of a mountainous view with a couple walking in it, German
gold gilt title. The chalice is cut white overlay over clear glass and has
beautiful cut decoration and gold gilt tracery all over the piece. Star cut
bottom.

Exceptional Museum quality Objects d'Art such as this piece were usually
purchased by wealthy tourist in the 19th century taking the Grand Tour of
Europe. Spa Beakers like this one often depicted view's of famous spa's where
wealthy tourist would purchase and drink mineral waters from springs out of
luxury goblets like this one.

Although I'm not A big beer drinker I can celebrate Oktoberfest in mid 19th
century style with this rare 1850's Bohemian white glass cut to clear glass overlay
beer stein. Found on the $10 table

This Paris porcelain gilt sauce tureen was on the $5 table because it had
chips.

This late 18th century early 19th century English Blue feather edge
Creamware platter was $45. I was happy to pay that on the first day of the sale
as I have never seen one priced under $600. Feather Edge English creamware was
inexpensive when new and was used daily in 18th and 19th century Gulf Coast
homes. Because it was used more often then fine porcelain very little of it has
survived today making it more costly then fine porcelain pieces.

18th century creamware English platter with gadrooned and scalloped rim.

I found this 18th century creamware English platter with gadrooned and
scalloped rim in a local Antique shop this Spring.

This best thing I bought this Summer was this 1820's Late Federal Louisiana
made Mahogany and walnut Plantation bed

The headboard has beautiful flamed Cuban Mahogany veneer

I love the beautifully turned post they remind me of post on Caribbean
beds.

The flamed Mahogany on the headboard is amazing

On the bottom of the post the original Federal brass bolt covers remain.

About Me

I'm a antique dealer and Historical Folk artist. I created this blog to document and highlight my artwork along with my day to day life as a Artist, Antique dealer and collector. My favorite two periods in history are France's Ancien Régime, the time of French Queen Marie Antoinette 1770-1789 and the antebellum period of the American South 1830-1860. Both of theses periods ended tragically with war. I intend to explore furniture, architecture, decorative arts, culture, history, fashion and the people that made up these two fascinating periods in time. I recently moved back to my roots of Mobile, Alabama after living away for 17 years. Come and explore the restoration of my turn-of-the century Art's and crafts bungalow into a Antebellum show place.